Sacred Is the Wind (20 page)

Jubal listened. Had he heard his name called? Tom, poor dead younger brother, dead dream, dead future, Tom called to him, where he wandered restless in the gray gloom, a spirit in the wet afternoon, crying, “Jubal … Jubal … avenge me, avenge …!”

How, dammit?
I returned to finish the job and found where the bloody murderers had escaped and made their camp by the pond in the heart of the forest. And I pursued them until the rain, the cursed rain
… Jubal poured the water from his hand and made a fist and raised it heavenward.

“First my parents. Now Tom. I am alone. What more do you want? I have served you. I have been a scourge to the heathen. Yet you send armies against me, sickness and rain. And yet do I say: If God is for me, who can prevail? I fight on!” The rain cooled his haggard, unshaven features. He no longer looked the gentleman. The death of his brother had stripped away the civility and revealed the dangerous man Jubal was. And always had been.

“Colonel.”

Jubal gasped and spun around, thinking at last to confront the ghost of his brother. But the rider in the rain was far too big for Tom. Still, Jubal shivered though he recognized Big Marley. The sergeant dismounted and climbed the few remaining yards to stride the hill alongside the man to whom he had pledged his loyalty, long ago.

“I told you not to come back. I ordered you to take six good men and press on.” Jubal Bragg turned away in disgust. “I thought I could count on you.”

“Colonel, I heard you. And I ain't never let you down,” Marley said. “Beggin' your pardon, Colonel …” Marley wiped the water from his eyes and tugged his short-brimmed cap low over his eyes. Even Pa, dumb as a bedbug, knew enough to come in out of the rain, the big sergeant said to himself, taking care not to accidentally voice his thoughts. “Sir, we know them Cheyenne are headin' north. Like you said, they probably figure to join up with the Northern tribes. But there's a dozen passes over the mountains if there's one. And plenty of hard ground that don't take to tracks.”

“So you gave up, old friend,” Jubal said. He couldn't see the next hill beyond the rain curtain, but he searched all the same. It was better than trying to sleep. It was better than the lonely madness of his tent.

“Give up, hell. I turned back the way we come,” Marley snorted. “The back a' my neck's been crawlin' all day. So I figured to scratch the itch. Circled my men, and damn if we didn't catch us a rabbit. A Cheyenne rabbit. Seems he got himself drunk, lost his horse, and slept off the cheap whiskey back in the woods. He come to after we rode back to Castle Rock. He thought maybe some gods had come down and killed off his people. He hung around and watched the murderin' dogs we missed hightail it out of the valley.”

“Why didn't he join them?”

“Seems they were bein' led by a brave he don't rightly have use for. That Northern Cheyenne, the one who murdered Tom.” Marley noticed Bragg stiffen, then slowly turn toward the sergeant. “Yeah,” Marley added. “Panther Burn. And get this, McKean was with them.”

Jubal slammed a fist against his thigh. “What else did the buck say before you killed him?” he asked in the shaky voice of a man struggling to maintain control in the face of overpowering frustration.

Marley shook his head. “He ain't dead. He's here, Colonel. I let him have a horse and brought him here.” Marley glanced back toward his horse as another rider materialized out of the downpour. The figure remained on horseback, waiting, a strange and somber silhouette. Jubal muttered a curse and drew the revolver from inside his coat. He covered the distance to the Cheyenne in half a dozen strides and raised the barrel, thumbing the hammer on his Colt as he sighted squarely on the man's heart.

“I know the way the Northerner will go,” the brave said. “I have been to the village of his people. Many years ago. But I still remember. The rain will not stop you. The rocks where horses and man leave no tracks will not stop you. I know the passes they will use. And I will lead you.”

Jubal stared at the mounted figure above him. The colonel's finger hesitated on the trigger. An ounce of pressure and the Cheyenne would die, leaving Jubal Bragg another corpse but nothing more. His thirst for revenge would remain unslaked. Only one death had the power to fulfill such a desperate need.

The revolver lowered.

“In return for what?” he asked.

“My life. And gold. A hundred dollars. It means little to you, white man, but much to a farmer.”

Bragg nodded and holstered his gun. The rain continued, just as hard, just as incessant. And Jubal laughed. After all, it didn't matter now. Marley listened, felt his flesh crawl at the sound. The brave, however, who was alive, and who intended to stay that way whatever the cost, remained unconcerned.

Jubal Bragg started down the slope, thought better of slogging through the mud, and mounted Marley's horse. The colonel, eye to eye with the brave, drew close.

“Do not try to trick me.” Bragg's tone as he uttered the warning was rife with unmentionable consequences. “Do you have a name, dog that hunts dogs?”

The brave glanced aside as if casting away the last remnant of his honor to the storm. “I am called …” His voice failed, then finished, “James Broken Knife.”

10

I
nto the Wind River Mountains fled the remnants of a people, a dispirited band of children and old men and women. Two wounded braves were confined to travois, makeshift litters pulled by the horses Panther Burn had managed to round up the morning of departure. Two weeks of hard travel on a diet of roots, berries, and small game brought the survivors of Rebecca's village to a place where the Big Horn River cut a gash through thickly forested hills and craggy cliffs, a primal valley, narrowing, doubling back then widening with nature's typical and capricious disregard for the necessities of man.

Home to the Absarokas, home to Montana. What would his father say, seeing the son who had brought shame to his lodge? More and more, Panther Burn began to relive the pain of his previous trek—the lonely journey that had brought him to the Warbonnet Creek where first he had caught sight of Rebecca Blue Thrush, where first his heart had called to hers in a secret song the young never fully understand, the old never completely forget. Now Rebecca kept apart from him, from all of them. Perhaps behind the walls of her indifference, her wounds mended and the horror dimmed. Panther Burn resolved to wait. He had been taught a lesson in patience months ago and carried the scar to prove it. On the fifteenth day of their arduous journey, all thoughts of Rebecca and songs of the heart were swept away by the news Sabbath brought on returning to camp late one night. He had back-trailed all afternoon and made a chilling discovery: Jubal Bragg had made camp with more than thirty troopers not more than two miles, as the crow flies, from the Southern Cheyenne's own fires.

Sabbath had called Panther Burn aside and wisely spoke in lowered tones so as not to alarm the others. Come morning, Panther Burn announced that he and the white man, McKean, were going to hunt. The old ones were grateful for the chance at some extra sleep. They had no way of guessing the object of the hunt, the nature of game, not until a smattering of gunfire reverberated from the cliffs, to echo the length and breadth of the valley. Not one shot, or two, but several.

Too many for a hunt.

The boom of a Hawken and the sharp crack of a Spencer carbine were followed by the whine of slugs caroming off a stone outcrop, tearing chunks of bark from the ponderosas and spattering the blue-coated soldiers with splinters. Bragg's column of men scattered from the trail as the rifle fire from their unseen assailants burned the air. Several of the soldiers opened fire toward the distant forest line, but without a target their shots only seemed to panic already skittish mounts. As the men on horseback broke for cover, low-hanging branches seemed to reach out and slap the soldiers out of their saddles. Rocks crumbled away, crippled hooves; horses neighed in agony and tumbled down the slope toward the river a hundred yards below.

Bragg shouted for his men to regain their order. Marley, an expert horseman when it came to mountain riding, charged back into the heart of the confusion, bellowing orders right and left and regaining control before it completely crumbled away.

“Hold there! That's it, lads, watch yourselves. Hec Knowles, you son of a whore, keep them lads with you in line. You there, head up the slope and clear the ridge above. What are you, wet-nosed whelps, bitch-suckled babes is it? And I thought I rode with fighting men. Fighting men, you hear! Well, that's what you be, so look tight. Look tight or lose scalp!”

Jubal Bragg guided his own mount behind a granite ledge, and dismounting, waited for Marley to bring order out of chaos. When he deemed his men able to pay proper attention, Bragg stepped out from concealment and walked briskly into their midst. He kept as much in the clear as possible, inviting the attention of unseen snipers. Authority was in every stride. A slug ricocheted from table rock, fanned his cheek and buried itself in the trunk of a nearby pine. He continued on to the front of the column, his presence bringing calm to the militia. Reaching the forefront, he came to a halt, and facing the hills in their shroud of shifting shadows, removed his plumed hat. A bullet plowed the earth before him. He kicked the dirt from his boots and bowed, then replaced the hat on his head, and turning, walked back through the ranks of his men, who raised rifles and hats in salute and cheered him. Jubal Bragg drew close to Marley, whose own expression revealed his pride and affection for the colonel.

“Sergeant, bring the Indian to me,” Bragg said. “And send half a dozen men out on point. Clear the trail ahead. I suspect this is no more than a couple of rifles trying to slow us up. Still, it pays to be cautious.”

“Yes sir,” Marley said, raising a beefy hand to his forehead in a grave salute.

A few minutes later James Broken Knife made his way down through the stand of ponderosas where the soldiers were making their cold camp now that the gunfire had slacked and the point riders had been dispatched. From time to time the Southern Cheyenne lifted his eyes to the northern reaches of the valley, his muscles tense, ready to propel him behind the nearest tree at the crack of a rifle. He made his way to Jubal Bragg where the self-styled officer squatted over a hastily built campfire, nursing the contents of a blue metal coffeepot to a slow boil. Bragg didn't bother to stand. He looked up as the Indian's shadow fell across him.

“I'm thinking of having Sergeant Marley put a bullet in your head,” he said. “We've followed this trail for two weeks, seen neither hide nor hair, now we've come under fire. Maybe you're trying to see how many of us you can lead into gun sights.”

“You pay me to help you find a panther, not to cage it. Now, when the panther shows his claws, you blame me,” James Broken Knife replied, with a forlorn wag of his head.

“The Northerner isn't alone. Your people are with him.”

James Broken Knife glanced toward the threatening hills beyond them, in the west, snow-covered precipices, partly hidden in the mist. Dead. All dead, his life ended too, in the valley of the Warbonnet. And yet he walked, breathed air, hungered, knew thirst. He survived. James Broken Knife had found a way to live again. But there was a price to pay.

“I have no people,” he said.

Rebecca was dreaming of a hand rising from ashes. In her mind's eye she relived the horror of the sight of that hand, the death it symbolized, the aloneness. The guilt too for being alive when so many had perished. And what was left for her … what solace for a bitter heart?
Mother, I am confused and frightened and alone.
It was the cry of a child, no matter what race or creed, age or wealth.

Tears glistened at the corners of her closed eyes. She saw the outstretched hand, the ashes of her mother's house, smelled again the stench of carnage, in her dream, looked upward, a prayer, muted in the silence, then saw, in the blackness coming toward her, glowing … glowing … in her dream saw what had not been before … the eyes of the wolf. Wolf of the sacred fire. Spirit-wolf. Its fur was blacker than the night, its eyes like twin coals, pulsing fire. Here was the
maiyun
Star had conjured. Rebecca could see it more clearly than ever before … this great spirit-wolf prowling through the night of Rebecca's dreams, dusting ashes from its bristling coat, fire eyes gently mocking. Against her breast, the medicine pouch Star had hung about her daughter's throat grew warmer until it seemed to sear her flesh, burn with a life of its own, like the eyes of the spirit-wolf. Rebecca gasped at the pain, but endured. Quite suddenly, as quickly as it had begun, the pain ended, leaving exultation in its place. And a sense of … completeness.

Rebecca wasn't alone anymore.

Hope Moon Basket shook her awake. Rebecca bolted upright at her friend's touch. The round-faced young woman looked close to panic. Then she noticed something in Rebecca's eyes and backed away.

“What is it? What is happening?” Rebecca glanced across the clearing at the other survivors of the village. Mothers gathered their children, the old ones began to moan in their fear. The wounded were dragged to the travois and roughly laid upon the crudely woven pallets lashed behind the horses. Zachariah led Joshua Beartusk over to Rebecca.

“The soldiers come.” Hope wailed. “They come with their many-times-firing rifles and their long knives.” She reached out and grabbed Rebecca by the arm. “We must hurry!”

“We heard shots,” Zachariah said by way of explanation. The boy had woven the eagle feather into his braided hair, his expression was grim and determined. It seemed to Rebecca that Zachariah had grown up during these past two weeks, that he had matured as they trekked from the dark and bloody ground of the Southern Cheyenne village up into the high passes of the Wind River range.

“Panther Burn and McKean left to hunt. It is right to hear shots. We will fill our bellies tonight,” Rebecca said.